Little Disappointments and the Love of God

5 kneejerk Christian responses – and what really helps

Welcome to my newsletter, where we explore faith with raw honesty in the light of suffering and hard-won hope. If you haven’t come across me before, I used to be in Christian ministry before a chronic illness left me pretty much bed-bound. I am a writer and speaker, and the author of Those Who Wait.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how to respond to deep disappointment, the type that feels completely overwhelming and makes you want to crawl under a duvet and weep.

But what about lesser disappointments?

Anniversary Fail and First World Problems

In the year of our 20th wedding anniversary, Jon and I were desperate for a break. It had been a hard season and we really wanted a treat – and to reconnect. Coincidentally, our son had a school trip, making it possible for us to go away as a couple for the first time since the Boy was born. We booked a night at a hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon and tickets to a Shakespeare play, and I looked forward to it every day for two months.

Ultimately, we had to cancel it. My health took a dive and I wasn’t well enough to go. We had a takeaway at home and I slept a lot. I was so disappointed and sad.

This year, it happened again: I planned an anniversary treat that was supposed to happen in May, and I’ve had to cancel it. In fact, to date, this year my health has been so bad that I have had to pull out of almost all planned treats, whether that was seeing a show or having friends round for coffee.

The most recent cancellation was yesterday: I had booked in advance to sing Mozart’s Requiem (masked up, in Canterbury Cathedral). I love that piece, I love singing, and it’s so special to perform in Canterbury Cathedral, that I clung to my illogical optimism that I could do it, right up to the day before when I was frantically locating a copy of the music score just in time. Yesterday, I woke up, and finally recognised that once again, there was no way I could do something so physical in the state I’m in at the moment. I had to pull out.

I have been denied Shakespeare, Mozart, and coffee with a friend. Mozart I have made my peace with, but the other two hit me hard, even though they were seemingly little disappointments. What is the Christian response when this happens?

With devastating headlines of children being starved and people wrongly imprisoned and wars and injustice each day, what scale do we use to measure our own lesser disappointments?

What if what we’re crying about really is a ‘first world problem’?

What if we know that life will bring some disappointments, but we have a rule in our heads that things are allowed to go wrong in ordinary time just not on birthdays, anniversaries or Christmas, because that’s just not fair?

What if we know that’s illogical but we feel it anyway?

What if we know we are supposed to smile and get over it and tell others that we’ve accepted things beatifically, but inside we’re still really sad?

How to Deal with Smaller Disappointments

Here are five common Christian ‘knee-jerk’ responses to disappointment (large and small). In this case, I’m not thinking about the more devastating disappointments, like losing the love of our life, being betrayed by a friend or having a life-long dream smashed.

I’m thinking smaller: cancelled events we were looking forward to, not achieving the littler goals we’ve set ourselves, lessening fitness due to age, a friend growing distant, that person we really clicked with not interested in a second date, getting told off at work, or myriad other things that make us sad, despite us knowing we’re not officially supposed to be upset about them, all things considered, when all’s said and done, in the fullness of time, etc...

Crucially, I’m not trying to make straw-man arguments here: there are good reasons we go to them, plenty of support in the Bible for each, and what will be a stumbling block for some will be a huge help to others. I do think it’s helpful, however, to have a closer look at whatever our instinctive response is and examine it a bit.

Five Instinctive Christian Responses

1. Be Grateful for What You Have

When I missed the anniversary break, I tried to combat my feelings of sadness by giving myself a stern talking to. I reek of privilege, I told myself. There are many people who would view a takeaway at home as an amazing treat, not a consolation prize. Come to that, 20 years of marriage was surely blessing enough. Other people wouldn’t even consider something so indulgent as a trip away to celebrate. Who am I to feel sad about this when there are actual tragedies going on the world, and much worse things happening at sea?

There’s biblical justification for this. After all, the Israelites in the desert were condemned for complaining about the monotony of their food instead of being grateful for their rescue from slavery in Egypt.

Sometimes, for some people, this is helpful and can shake someone out of unnecessary self-pity. Sometimes it can help to get a fresh perspective on our problems by looking at this globally. Sometimes it can help to focus on our blessings, not what we’re missing out on.

For me, at that time, acknowledging all this did not stop my sadness. It just piled guilt on top.

2. God Has a Better Plan

Christians often reach for this as a go-to for any disappointment, no matter how big or small.

Lost out on that perfect job? God has a better plan for you and something even more wonderful will come along next year!

Your crush has started a relationship with someone else? God has someone even more perfect out there for you!

Missing your friends from your former city? God will give you even better friends in your new city! God closes a door but opens a window.

I don’t want to completely dismiss this – it can be a great comfort and hope in the throes of despair. God is kind, and often our darkest moments precede a bright dawn of hope.

But there is no guarantee here. God loves us, but this world is hard and often cruel, and some people lurch from tragedy to tragedy for no good reason.

Maybe we will always miss those old friends, no matter how many new ones we get. Maybe we will always feel the grief of that early miscarriage, even after we’ve had three children. God doesn’t promise that our lives will go from good to even better in a constant upward trajectory.

3. God’s Protecting You

Sometimes in hindsight we can see God’s protection. I didn’t get into my first choice of university, but if I had, there’s a good chance the significantly demanding workload would have been too much for my limited body and I might have had to drop out.

Back in January, I lost my voice for six weeks, and my larynx is still healing. Maybe if I’d gone through with my plans to sing Mozart’s Requiem yesterday, it would have damaged my voice further, and this is God’s way of protecting me from that.

However, we need to be really careful asserting this. I’ve seen this thinking when disasters have happened, such as a plane crash, and someone says, ‘I was so disappointed when I had a flat tyre and ended up missing my flight. But obviously there was a bigger plan – God was protecting me so I didn’t have to die on that plane.’

The obvious problem with this viewpoint is that the other people whom God helped to get to their plane on time died tragically on the flight. If we believe that God stopped us from getting on the disastrous flight, was God choosing that everyone else on it should die?

4. God’s teaching you a lesson

It is all too easy to find moral lessons in others’ misfortune. As long as we can find some meaningful point to take away, an experience can easily become a sermon illustration.

With all the cancellations I’ve had so far this year, I could think of this as God’s way of telling me to be more content with what I have. After all, 1 Timothy tells me that ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain’. The ability to be aim to be content with our life no matter the circumstances is a good general principle. It’s a good challenge that we all need to hear.

But it may not be the lesson I specifically need to learn at this specific time, and we need to be wary of assuming lessons from others’ situations. I have been chronically ill for years and years, with lots of different kinds of deprivation, and varying levels of suffering. I have had more practice than most to be grateful for the little things in life, and often I actually manage this.

Not every story has to be a morality tale, and when we confront someone’s experience of disappointment with a whiteboard and chalk instead of a comforting hug, we fail them.

5. Good will come out of it

Again, this doesn’t come out of nowhere and is based on the beloved verse of Romans 8:28, ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’ (NIV)

For this, I’d say we need to be careful not to mistake ‘God working for [our] good’ as the ‘all things’ themselves being intrinsically good. There are some so eager to make a silver lining out of others’ suffering that they ignore the weight of the black cloud itself, and this has the effect of minimising legitimate grief.

Three Things that Help Me In Smaller Disappointments

1. Little griefs are attached to bigger griefs.

Last month, I had to cancel seeing a friend at my house for coffee. I felt depressed for days afterwards. On the face of it, that was no big deal – people cancel plans all the time. For me, though it felt bigger. This was a local friend, but I hadn’t seen her for over a year because we hadn’t had any opportunity where I was well and she wasn’t having to look after her own kids because they’d come down with something. We’d finally got a date in and I was looking forward to it.

On the day, however, I had to cancel it because I literally didn’t have the strength to walk downstairs and open the front door. That set off all kinds of griefs and frustration – concern about my worsening health, frustration at being able to do so little, guilt for being a bad friend, sadness at being so cut off from the world, despair that I have been in worse health for so long.

My missed Mozart was easier to deal with, but it was yet another cancelled appointment in the context of months of cancelled appointments, and I have started to worry that my health is no longer ‘bad but stable’ but perhaps ‘worse and unstable’ and I may not be able to plan anything in advance.

While others may not understand why we are distraught about our tomato plants that didn’t grow this year, when God has blessed us with the resources to buy tomatoes in supermarkets, there could be all kinds of levels of grief under the surface that trigger big feelings about small events.

If something you would consider minor or mundane is really getting to you, take time to sit with your grief and listen to what it’s telling you. The small disappointment may have long roots.

2. Emotions Are Best Expressed to God, Not Suppressed

The psalmist invites us: ‘pour out your hearts to [God], for God is our refuge.’ (Psalm 62:8

God is not the police officer of our emotions, telling us what we should or shouldn’t be feeling sad about. God is the refuge, the safe place, the private space where we can be honest and unvarnished.

3. God’s Compassion Is Big Enough for First World Problems

It feels daring even to write this, because I know that the melody of the Bible is to care for people in need, the poor, not the rich, and for our concerns to be global, not parochial. I don’t want to take away from that truth.

And yet, sometimes I need to be honest before God, and not in a grown-up, ‘I’d like to politely bring this to your attention’ kind of way. I need to be a toddler who’s trantrumming because they’ve had their fun thing taken away, and be a child who doesn’t understand why all the other kids seem to get the better toys, or the teenager who’s sick of being grounded when everyone else is having fun. God knows our humanity, our frailty, our pettiness, our weakness, and God loves us and understands us. We are mortals made out of mud, and sometimes we will feel unseasonably, unreasonably sad, even when other Christians don’t think we have the right to be.

‘As a [parent] has compassion on [their] children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.’ - Psalm 103:13–14

We are always allowed to be children in prayer.

So if you are finding yourself rebuking yourself for little disappointments, or crying over spilt milk, figuratively or literally (because it’s always you who has to clean it up again), show yourself compassion. God knows how we are formed.

Prayer exercise:

• Picture yourself as a child coming before the most understanding and kind person you have ever known. What difference does it make to approach prayer with this posture?

• Pour out your heart to God with every frustration and little disappointment you are experiencing right now. Allow yourself to say, ‘And another thing…’ whenever something new comes to mind.

• What emerges for you as you voice these things? What shifts or deepens?